Wednesday, November 7, 2012

lost pets

Note:

The thing that I really like
about Berlin is that people here still have enough faith in humanity to put up
lost pet signs.

Almost everyone in Australia,
where I grew up, had given up on that idea by the end of the 90’s and now if
you see a lost pet sign at home you know it’s just a parent wanting to give
their young child peace of mind and something to do and that the parents know
almost definitely that nothing will come of it.

Here, however, in small
country town Berlin, I get the impression, after seeing so many lost pet signs,
that they aren’t intended just as a token but more as a promise.There’s something about lost
pet signs that evokes some sort of displaced sadness in me every time I see
one. It’s sad that the pet is lost but that isn’t why these signs are so sad.

There’s something tragic about
just how capable we are of falling in love with animals and there’s something
sad about the naivety of the whole idea of a lost pet sign: that whatever
hopeful person put up the lost pet sign still had enough faith in other
people’s good intentions and/or willingness to go out of their way for a
stranger.

They make me sad because I’m
fairly sure that 90% of these people are never going see their pet again. It’s
probably already dead. The person whose car hit it probably just left it
there. In this modern day and age
when you lose things you don’t get them back and when you find things you keep
them for your self or you leave them behind. Things that belong to strangers
and strangers’ problems are not your responsibility. These signs are a counterargument
to this contemporary thesis. That is what makes them beautiful, and that is
what makes them sad that the hope that they represent is more often not
completely unrealistic in terms of the society we actually live in.